With Great Power
by Gendie01
Summary: I wake up as the Overmind, lost on a strange world, in a strange galaxy. Self Insert. Muilt-Crossover.
1. Starter Base 1-1

What would be your first thought if you went to bed one night, perfectly normal in your home, and the next morning you woke up, you found yourself in a strange place, with your perfectly normal human body replaced with a huge mass of quivering flesh?

At least, that's what it seems like at first, when I woke up. It's kind of like waking up like normal. Not all of your senses come back to your right away. It takes time, even if only a few seconds. But when they did, it felt like waking up with a hangover, as with my new body my senses were now much more acute, but my still humanish mind didn't know how to handle them yet. Not the mention that I now had a thousand eyes and ears where before I only had two of each, a thousand noses and mouths where before I only had one of each, and a whole lot of other sensory organs besides.

As it was, it took me a few hours before I got my bearings, and took stock of my surroundings.

I appeared to be in a tropical jungle, judging by the trees, the humidity, and the heat. My body appeared to be much taller than the trees surrounding me, and I guess I had to be at least 400 meters tall, with a wider base. I was taller than many skyscrapers.

From my base there appeared to be some sort of purplish stringy moss growing around me. The moss was apparently part of my body cause I could see from eyes down there, and also taste anything that touched it. Speaking of, there appeared to be several fat wriggling worms down there, hanging around my base. They were eating the purplish moss, and despite it being part of my body, it didn't hurt when they bit into it. The moss seemed to regrow just as quickly as they ate it.

I felt a stranger sense connecting me to the worms. It felt like I was feeling them with my mind. Curious, I probed this sense, licking at their souls to get a better sense of them. When I did this, they shuddered and stopped moving. Curious.

All of this felt very familiar, like I'd seen this before, somewhere…

Oh right, Zerg. Duh.

So I was a hatchery then? I looked around with my new eyes. No there were those huge bone spikes poking up from my base. I was a Hive. I was also either the Overmind, or a Cerebate. I probed the strange sense that had connected me to the Larva. Was there some greater entity out there controlling me? I didn't feel like I was being controlled. That probably meant I was either a rogue Cerebate, or actually the Overmind itself.

Either way, I didn't feel like being controlled was something I wanted, so if I was a rogue Cerebate, then I would plan to remain a rogue Cerebate.

With that out of the way, I probed another one of my new sense to see how much resources I had. Not a lot, apparently. Enough to make about a hundred units of zerg, but not much more than that. I probed another sense to see what gene sequences I had access to. Only three: Overlords, Drones, and… Prospectors?

Curious, I examined the sequence of the Prospectors. Oh, it seemed that Prospectors were used to find minerals when they weren't readily available as crystalline structures. Well, that explained why I hadn't heard of them before, they wouldn't have been useful in the Koprulu sector where there were a lot of those crystalline minerals. Speaking of which…

I glanced around me with my new eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of those crystal minerals. No such luck, there was none to be found. There weren't any Vespene gas geysers anywhere either.

Just my luck, the person who dumped me here wasn't kind enough to put me in a place were I had access to these things.

This was going to be a problem. Vespene gas was necessary for evolution, fuel, and awaking Psionic potential. The Zerg had originally evolved without it, but once they had found it, they had evolved to have a great affenity for it. Without it, I would have problems with controlling my brood, as without psionics they would have problems connecting to the zerg network, and would go feral.

I was suddenly thankful that who ever had left me here had given me some starter resources so that I could make some units without having to worry that they would go feral.

After thinking about it, I decided to make some overlords first, so they could scout the area and see if there were any Vespene gas geysers nearby.

Turning my attention back to the larva, I was startled to discover that while I was thinking, a large batch of them had appeared. There were about twenty larva on the ground right now, but only 6 six of them were ready to grow into new units.

I quickly ordered them to grow into Overlords, and they twisted around, biting their tails. After a few moments, creep grew up over them, forming cocoons.

I was fascinated by the whole process, as I had not known until now that they bit their tails first, or that creep was responsible for forming their cocoons. I still felt their minds as they turned into mush inside their cocoons, becoming raw essence. That was interesting. I wondered what was hosting their minds as surly their brains weren't intact anymore, right?

As I made that thought, I realized suddenly that I knew how it worked exactly. Apparently I had the memories of the old Overmind, but they were there in the background, only surfacing if I thought of them. The minds of the larva was held in the creep itself, which apparently had it's own nervous system.

You learn new things every day.

It took the larva two hours to fully form into Overlords, by which time I had ordered two thirds of the other larva to turn into Drones, while one third turned into Prospectors.

When the overlords were done, I sent four of them off in the cardinal directions, while one traveled upwards to get a better idea of what was in the distance, and one stayed to keep an eye on the drones and prospectors.

The Prospectors looked like gnarly flies that buzzed around and licked the ground with long tongues to taste it's mineral content. Their tongues were sharp and powerful, able to dive into hard stone like fish, and I got the feeling that they were at least six two meters long.

It didn't take them long to find a few spots nearby with good mineral content, and I ordered the drones to start clearing out the trees to make a path to those areas.

The trees were brought back and placed in my mouths, which proceeded to crunch them up with powerful jaws and unbreakable molars. When the trees had been rendered to pulp, my mouths would swallow them. This was unconscious, as I didn't directly control my own mouths. The trees were rather bland, it's essence not very colorful, but I did take the time to store it's sequence in my memory for later use.

It didn't take very long before all of my mouths were working to crunch up trees, and a back line started to form. My drones were cutting down trees faster than I could process them. I ordered them to slow down, but it was galling that I couldn't process them fast enough. Something to think about later. At least my mineral count was going up.

I made drones until I had thirty of them, then I ordered one of them to form a spawning pool, away from the lanes bringing me wood, so that I could make zerglings. The spawning pool took up ten units worth of the vespene gas the ROB who dumped me here had so generously gifted me, so I had to be conservative with it from here on out until I could find some more.

The spawning pool six hours to finish, after which I turned ten larva into twenty zerglings. By now the drones had encountered a few animals, which had fled at the sight of zerg. I ordered ten of my zerglings to set out to find these animals, while the other ten were ordered to protect my drones in case a predatory animal turned up to try and hunt them. It didn't seem likely, though, as the drones were rather enormous.

By now the Drones were mining for minerals, digging up rocks and returning them to the hive. If the trees had been bland, the rocks were tasteless, and their texture was rather grainy.

An hour later, the zerglings brought back animals they had hunted down, and they were a lot more tasty, their essence blooming in color. Like before, I stored their sequences in memory for later.

It was when I had a few of the drones clearing out the trees in a ring around me that I discovered an opening in my Hive. Curious, I ordered on my drones to enter the opening, and when they did, I discovered my real body. There was a large cave-like opening inside the hive, at the bottom of which my real body lay. I looked like a Cerebate.

I didn't know how large Cerebate's were normally, but I looked pretty big. I was wrapped around a pillar, atop which was a purple Khaydarin Crystal. It was glowing with a purple aura.

I wasn't quite sure what purpose the crystal had, but it could be useful in case I couldn't find any Vespene gas, which was looking to be likely.

Khaydarin Crystals were reservoirs of Psionic energy, and they absorbed any kind of energy that surrounded it, be it living energy, light, sound, psionics, or any other kind of energy besides.

By now the Overlords had traveled quite far, and had yet to find a single Vespene Geyser.

If I didn't think of something quick, I was going to run out of fuel and lose control of my brood.

And if that happened, I would die.


	2. Starter Base 1-2

Ok, first… solving the Psionics problem. I could find other sources of fuel, but Psionics was more important, as I needed my zerg to awaken their Psionics so that I could retain control of them.

According to the Overmind's memories, the only purpose of the Khaydarin Crystal inside the Hive was to assist with long distance communication. As far as I knew, I didn't have anyone to communicate with, so I could safely remove the crystal from the Hive if I wanted to.

I ordered the drone that was already inside the hive to remove the Khaydarin Crystal from the pillar and move it outside. Once outside, I ordered the Drone to break it apart into smaller bits, then spread them out so that they could absorb some sunlight. As they absorb energy, the crystals would grow, and I would be able to absorb the Psionic energy inside of it.

However, to do so I would need a specialized structure, one specifically designed to draw out the Psionic energy and funnel it to cocooned larva.

To design this structure, I would need an evolution chamber. Evolution chambers were basically laboratories were genetic sequences could be re-sequenced to create or improve units and structures.

By my count I had about thirty units of power left, so I orders a drone to turn into one now. When it was finished six hours later, I set about created a blueprint for the structure I needed. I only had twenty units of power left, so I had to get it right the first time around.

I cast about through the old Overmind's memories to see if he had ever created such a structure. He had, a few times, but the memories were faded. Still, it was better than nothing.

After a few hours of work, I finally had the the blue print for a structure that I called the Lodestone. It was very similar to the Protoss pylon, but since it's energy output flowed through the creep, it wasn't as limited in area, and I would hopefully only need one per hive.

Mentally crossing my fingers in hope that it would work the first time around, I ordered a drone to turn into the structure. The drone picked up one of the larger fragments of the Khaydarin Crystal, then settled in to turn into the Lodestone. Thankfully it only took five units of energy to build, an a few hours later I was the proud owner of a brand spanking new Lodestone.

Unfortunately, the Lodestone did not draw Psionic energy out of the Crystal as efficiently as I had hoped it would, so unit production would be slower until I could work out the bugs, but it worked well enough for my purposes.

Now that that problem was solved, I turned my attention to other problems, mainly how to catalyze zerg evolution and how to get fuel.

When the zerg had found Vespene gas, they had used it to catalyze their own evolution. Vespene gas catalyzed Zerg essence, allowing it to adapt and change more quickly than it otherwise normally would have. This wasn't always the case, as the primal zerg had easily evolved without it, but the Swarm Zerg essence was dependent on it, like a drug, and I suspected that weening off this drug would be difficult.

Without Vespene Gas, the Swarm Zerg wouldn't readily adapt to new environments, and would require an infusion of local essence to survive. I may be able to partly catalyze our essence with Psionics energy, but it wouldn't be as good as raw Vespene gas.

Still, I would take what I could get.

Lacking any other solutions to this problem, I decided to focus on the fuel problem, and I think I already had a solution for it: Plant essence. Plants got their energy from the sun, so all I needed was some plant essence.

As the Drones had cleared out not just the trees, but also several shrubs and grass, I already had a lot of it to work with, so I went back to the evolution chamber to work out a plan. The idea was to change the creep itself so that it could photosynthesize to produce glucose. Glucose could be converted into ATP, which could then be converted into proteins, carbohydrates and adipose. The glucose itself would be created by the creep, while the other stuff happen inside the other zerg units.

For this to work would require changing the internal biology of the zerg, but if I catalyze our essence right, it shouldn't be a problem. I set about drawing up the plans for a new structure that would serve this purpose, and in the mean time I ordered all of my units to return to the hive.

The structure I came up with was more of a reservoir for glucose when it wasn't being used, and I created a different structure for waste processing.

Once I was finished with the blueprints, I ordered one of the drones to turn into the reservoir, and another to turn into the waste processing structure. Once they had turned into cocoons, I infused the new essence into the creep, and ordered the remaining units to take a small bite of it. Once they did, they turned into cocoons, and I infused the cocoons with Psionic energy to catalyze their essence.

I had used the animal essence to change their biology so that they could actually consume and process glucose, but made it more efficient than it otherwise would have been.

Slowly, the creep turned from a dark purple into a brilliant shade of green. What had been a short fuzz like moss turned into long blades of grass with moss under it. The creep grew roots that dug into the ground underneath it, and tubes meant to funnel glucose grew between them. The roots connected to the Hive, and I funneled out more minerals to help the creep grow.

It would take a while to build a store of glucose, but I was just glad that it had worked properly.


	3. Starter Base 1-3

For the next two weeks I was mostly preoccupied with building up glucose, gathering up resources, and setting up defenses.

The Prospectors continued to buzz around, looking for new minerals to mine, and the drones kept mining away or clearing more trees.

Two days after I had built the glucose reservoir and the waste treatment plant, I decided to start spawning queens to start spreading creep tumors. The creep tumors now resembled short shrubby trees, and I worked on expanding the creep out to the mines, as well as around the area.

Two weeks after my arrival to this place, the creep had spread to about 30 square kilometers around me, clearing out all of the trees around me. The place looked like a huge green clearing in the middle of the jungle.

The mines were about 75 meters into the earth by now, and at a new locations I had ordered the drones to form a strip mine. About 40 Overlords were flying around, and 200 zerglings patrolled the area, killing any animals that came too close.

A week and a half after my arrival, I decided to spawn 10 Spine Crawlers and 20 Spore Crawlers, placing them in strategic locations around my base, just in case I encountered something that my zerglings couldn't easily deal with, such as flying beasts.

After two weeks of this constant work, I finally started to feel somewhat secure. I had a good store of resources, didn't have to worry too much about fuel, and was relatively well defended. Now I could turn my attention to other things weren't as pressing.

OO

The Lodestone was starting to become a problem. It worked well for what I needed it to do, but it was terribly inefficient. For every 10 units of Psionic energy it extracted from the Khaydarin Crystal, 9 of those units were lost, wafting up from the extractor like a hazy mist. Thankfully the Crystal itself reabsorbed most of the energy, but the remainder that it didn't absorb was starting to create a weird warping effect around the Lodestone. The warping effect damaged the extractor itself, so I had to turn it off every now and then so it could repair itself.

Clearly I had made mistakes somewhere, so with my new found free time I set about figuring out where I had gone wrong.

Psionics required a very specific genetic sequence to work properly, and it turned out I had made a few errors when spinning up the new genetic code. After a few hours of fixing the code, I ordered the existing lodestones to reconstitute themselves, causing them to turn into the normal building cocoon. After an hour, the new and improved lodestones emerged, and I felt a sudden influx of Psionic power.

The lodestone was now working properly. The zerg now had a surplus of Psionic energy to catalyze our essence.

I mentally eyed the Lodestone with one of my overlords eyes. Supply was now keeping up with demand, and I had a small surplus. If I made another lodestone, I might be able to use Psionic energy as a fuel source as well, in addition to glucose. Or perhaps replace glucose altogether.

The other Khaydarin Crystals were still laying on the creep, gathering energy from the sun. they had grown bigger, and by now I had replaced the crystal inside the hive.

I ordered two drones to return and pick up two of the larger crystals, and then turn into lodestones. They did so, and when the lodestones emerged a few hours later, my hunch was proven correct. I no longer was dependent on glucose.

I gave a mental sigh. Well it was nice while it lasted. At least my zerg wouldn't be pooping all over the place now. I gave orders for more Lodestones to be made, and for the last of the glucose to be consumed, and when that was done and the zerg weren't pooping anymore, for the glucose structures to be reabsorbed back into the creep. I kept the creep green, however, for camouflage. I would figure out how to disguise my hive, and how to make tree like structures, later.

With that out of the way, I turned to another problem that had cropped up: digestion. The mouths at the base of my hive were having problems chewing up resources. They weren't really designed for hard rocks, dirt, and chewy trees. They were meant to crush up fragile mineral crystals and swallow soft sacs of Vespene gas. This, along with the fact that they were basically working 24/7, meant that the teeth were starting to crack and break under the strain.

In addition, the mouths took time to chew up each morsel, meaning that my drones were forming queues to deliver their loads. I was reluctant to make another hive to ease up the load because I felt that it wouldn't solve the fundamental problem. Plus, I had other problems with the hive that I will get to later.

My solution was as brilliant as it was simple, make a new structure that was a digestive system. It wasn't modeled exactly after animal digestive systems, but that didn't mean I couldn't steal a few ideas from evolution.

The first part of the structure was the Gizzard. The Gizzard was made with the strongest muscles and teeth I could find in the zerg genetic memory. It had a storage volume capacity of 5 cubic meters, could quickly and easily grind up stones and trees to a paste. It was mostly underground, leaving it's opening at ground level for drones to easily drop things into it.

When it was done grinding things into a paste, it would pass this paste to the next part of the digestive system: the Digestion Pool. The Digestion Pool was a large pool of the strongest acid in the zerg genetic memory. The Digestion Pool was much bigger than the Gizzard, and had a storage volume capacity of 25 cubic meters. The walls of the Digestion Pool were protected by a thick mucus, like a normal stomach. It was open air, and small tentacles, also covered in mucus, would dip into the pool and flick out stuff that wasn't corrodible, to keep the pool clean. The noncorroding stuff would then be dumped into one of the empty mines, until I could figure out what to do with it. The nutrient slime from the pool was then sent to a nutrient storage structure until it was ready to be used.

When I had finished designing this structure, I ordered five of them to be made, close to the active mines so that the drones didn't have to travel long distance. With that out of the way, I turned my attention to the last major problem on my list: unit production.

I didn't like the way larva spawned and grew. My ginormous Hive could only spawn about 6 larva per hour, for about 120 larva per day. And that was if I had a queen attending to it with spraying the growth hormone. Once the larva were spawned, they had to spend about an hour eating creep before they were ready. After that, they spent another hour inside a cocoon before they finally turned into what ever unit I needed.

I knew I could do better, but the question was how. I cast about through the old Overmind's genetic memory, hoping to find an answer there. No such luck, the Overmind had been doing it this way for as long as it could remember. Whatever solution I came up with, it was something I was going to have to figure out myself.


	4. Starter Base 1-4

The first solution I came up with for the unit production problem was fairly simple: it was a structure that I called the egg hill, which (as it's name implies) was a hill-like structure made of creep that could produce up to a hundred eggs per minute. Each egg was produced from a gap in the structure (Trypophobics would shudder at the sight of it), which would then be picked up by a specially made drone that was covered in tentacles and could carry up to 25 eggs at a time. The Drone would then plant the egg somewhere else in the creep, and from the egg a cocoon would sprout. Then an hour later, a Zerg unit would be spawned from that cocoon.

At first I had to manually designate which unit each egg would spawn, but that got mind numbingly boring very fast, so I handed over the task to two overlords and gave them set rates for each unit I wanted produced each hour.

That should have been my first clue that my design was flawed.

No longer having to worry about unit designations (at least, I _thought_ that was the case), I turned my mind to other matters. By now I had eight of my overlords in orbit of the planet, and one of them had discovered lights on the night side of the planet, indicating that there may be a civilization on this world.

I was still in the process of creating a complete mental map of the world, and was micromanaging resource throughput, when I decided to check in on unit production.

What I found was a complete mess: the creep surrounding my hive was littered with cocoons, many of which had wilted because the creep was having a hard time distributing nutrients to each one. There was too much demand and not enough supply. Then there was the fact that my drones were having to crawl over cocoons or even smash them because I had failed to set up proper supply lanes. Plus, the Lodestones were starting to over heat because the extractors were pulling out more psionic energy than they could handle to keep up with demand.

The Overlords I had assigned to do unit designations simply hadn't done their job very well, as apparently they weren't very mentally flexible. The unit rates were off, and the cocoons that _had_ hatched, produced Zerglings or Drones, but not enough Overlords. And without Overlords, other Zerg units were at a dangerous risk of going feral.

I gave a mental sigh. Back to the drawing board it was.

I gave the order to the drones to halt mineral and unit production, and then had them uproot all the extra cocoons from the creep and started tossing them into Gizzards. I then ordered the Nutrient Storage Tank to flush what was left of it's contents into the creep so that the creep could repair itself. Finally, I ordered the creep to reabsorb the egg hill.

When all that was done, I executed a kill switch in some the extra Units I didn't have enough overlords for, and had their bodies tossed into the Gizzards.

Then I ordered mineral production to continue, and for unit production to start again the original way.

Now, to think: How could I learn from this experience, and not repeat the same mistakes?

Well, I thought the biggest problem was how the cocoons got littered everywhere on the creep, and how the creep had a hard time distributing resources. Now, that problem could be solved by being careful with how, when, and where cocoons were placed, and by making a dedicated resource funnel network, but I had the feeling that it wouldn't solve the fundamental problem.

I had plans to spread out and form new Hive Clusters in the future, and I didn't want to have to waste time micromanaging unit production. I wanted my unit production to be self managing, and I had the feeling that would be much harder if all my cocoons were spread out across the creep. For one thing it would increase travel time for drones carrying eggs to their cocoon sites, and any intelligence I created to handle the problem would have to adapt to new terrain as the Zerg Swarm came across it, which would be a logistical nightmare for a race that was constantly on the move.

I was starting to understand why the Overmind had never bothered to improve it's unit production system.

What I really wanted was a structure that could handle it's logistics internally, automatically, without having to worry about how the surrounding terrain might change those logistics.

So, I decided, lets go back to basics. The Zerg Unit Production System was fairly simple. A large, upgrade-able structure called a Hatchery was the source of Zerg Units. It made units by producing a large grub like unit called a Larva. When the larva was made, it would plop down onto the creep and start eating it like food, and when it had eaten enough, it could turn into whatever zerg unit the Overmind or Cerebate required of it, then go about it's business.

This was as logistically simple as you could get, trading off production efficiency for logistic simplicity, such that the Cerebate in control of that particular brood didn't have to worry about where, when, and how his units will get produced, allowing them to focus on other, more important things, such as whatever larger task they were engaged in.

So the question was, how could I improve upon this system without sacrificing logistic simplicity?

On a whim, I decided to read the genetic sequence of the zerg Hatchery to get an idea of how it worked, and noticed several areas that could be improved right away. The main thing was that the Hatchery doubled as a resource consumption structure as well as a unit production structure. Taking out the resource consumption parts would make a lot more room for unit production parts, and would improve unit production by a factor of 2, allowing the Hatchery to produce 18 Larva per hour, instead of just 6.

Another part was the way that larva was produced. Larva were created in womb like sacks, and it took them two hours form. At any given time there was 18 Larva being baked in the oven, with 6 outputted per hour. With the new system that number would rise to 54, with 18 outputted per hour. I could improve this by restructuring the genetic sequence to make eggs instead, and a lot of the more inefficient systems meant to support the womb like sacs would be removed, allowing me to produce 100 eggs per hour, or even more.

But then I would run into the cocoon space problem, _again_. Ugg, I felt like screaming. Mentally, of course. My mouths couldn't scream. Who knew logistical problems could be so _hard_?

Clearly, I was approaching the problem from the wrong direction. With that in mind, I decided to cast my mind into an overlord who was floating a kilometer high above my hive cluster. I had been looking at things from the bottom up, maybe the top down view would change how I looked at things.


	5. Starter Base 1-5

Through the eyes of my Overlord, I examined the base that I had spent several weeks constructing. The creep was still green and grassy looking, as I had kept the color and texture to disguise my camp from above. To that end, I had created some tree like structures, for purely to help the disguise. My hive now looked like a grassy hill with trees all over it.

The Drones were very busy with the mines, with several new mines having been started in the last few days, as the old mines had been mined out. I was now using the old mines as storage for stuff that wouldn't melt in acid.

The Zerglings continued to patrol the area, but no new animals had come nearby the camp in a while, I guess they had learned to steer clear of my base.

I now had 20 queens up and running, one of which was spraying growth hormone onto my Hive, while the others were planting creep tumors that grew into trees.

I eyed the other structures in the base. The Gizzards, Digestion Pools, and Lodestones were all operating at peak efficiency. Then my eyes came to a rest on the Spawning Pool that that I had made so I could create Zerglings.

Spawning Pool, now there was an idea.

The reason why Zerglings required a Spawning Pool to be made was because Zerglings were created from a primordial soup that Spawning Pool was specifically made to create. However, the ancient Primal Zerg of Zerus were actually created from Spawning Pools. Ancient Primal Zerglings had first emerged from the spawning pools, their primal essence reacting to the harsh environment surrounding them, fueling their evolution.

If the Primal Zerg had done it that way, there was no reason why I couldn't.

I carefully considered my options, wanting to make sure that I didn't make a mistake like my first attempt.

The biggest problem that I could see was, if I took away the spawning larva and resource processing functions of the hatchery, the only function that would be left is spawning creep. The hatchery was one of two structures that could spawn without creep, making it critical for any expansion attempt. I wasn't willing to get rid of creep altogether, as it made resource distribution much easier.

Which meant I was going to have to design a new structure that could fill the critical role of initial creep generation.

Now that I thought about it, this was actually an opportunity: I could reconfigure the way that creep spread, and the way that resources were distributed.

I dove into the mind of the evolution chamber and started drawing up plans for my new creep spawner.

OO

Two hours later I emerged from the Evolution Chamber, tired but satisfied. I had designed the new creep spawning structure, and the new unit spawning structure, as well as a smaller home for my body to be placed in, since I would be replaying the Hive with the new structure.

With that in mind, I ordered my body's new home to be grown. My new home was mainly just a divot in the creep that my body could be placed in. once that was done, a layer of creep would be grown over me, with a lodestone in the middle so that none of my zerg would accidentally trample over me.

When the new structure was ready, I ordered some drones to come into the hive to extract me. I couldn't even feel it as they lifted my body from its old home, and transferred it to the new one. Once I was settled in, I ordered the Hive to reconstitute itself into the new structure.

The new structure, which I called the Worm's Nest, looked very similar to a hatchery, but it was shorter and wider. The Worm's Nest had two phases. Phase One was meant for Broods that had just arrived on a new world and didn't have the resources to make a Spawning Pool right away. Phase One still had the ability produce units. It also produced Creep, and a new unit I called Wormlings.

Wormlings were derived from Nydus Worms, but were much smaller and were meant to connect different structures together (such as connecting a Digestion Pool to a Nutrient Slime Storage Tank) and carry resources between them much faster than the creep could alone.

When a Brood was ready to create a Spawning Pool, the Worm's Nest would produce a special larva that was designed to hold a lot of resources. When the larva was ready, a drone would carry it to it's new location, where it would transform into the initial building sac.

The Worm's Nest would then hook up to it, and funnel a few specialized units called Drill-lings, which would drill into the earth under the building sac to make a deep enough area for the cocoons to spawn in. The earth that was removed would be funneled to a Digestion Pool. When Drill-lings were finished, they activate a special sac inside of them, which would cause them to dissolve into the liquid of the building sac.

The building sac would then grow the inner lining of the Spawning Pool, from which 5 meter long tentacles would spawn, as well as cocoons sacs, from which Cocoons would spawn naturally. When that was done, the building sac would pop and the Spawning Pool would be open for business. When a Cocoon was finished growing, the tentacles would pop it out of it's sac, then ferry it up to the surface, where the cocoon itself would pop upon contact with air, and from the remains of the cocoon the newly born Zerg unit would emerge.

Once the Spawning Pool was finished, the Worm's Nest could move into Phase Two, where it would lose the ability to spawn units, but would gain the ability to spawn Tumor Worms, which would burrow to the edge of the creep and plant themselves there, allowing the creep to grow much more quickly than before, no Queens needed. Now the only things I need Queens for was Growth Hormone.

With all these problems fixed, I finally felt secure in my base, and was ready to turn my attention to more important matters, namely, that civilization on the other side of the planet.


	6. Expansion 2-1

The world that I had woken up on had three major continents. There was the continent that my base was on: it was about the size of Greenland and was on the equator.

There was continent on one of the poles, about the size of Africa.

And then there was the largest continent, the size of Asia. This continent had one end on the other pole, and the other end on the equator, on the other side of the planet from mine. The civilization that I had discovered sat on this largest continent, in the more temperate regions.

Ever since I had discovered it, I had had my Overlords keeping a close eye on it from orbit. I was reluctant to actually get too close to the civilization with my Overlords because I didn't want them to know that there was an alien intelligence living on the planet with them. Not that it was likely they could infer that.

I had, however, ordered my Overlords to capture some winged vertebrates from the region that the civilization was located in for their essence. These winged vertebrates looked suspiciously like birds, but that shouldn't be possible if I was on an alien planet, right? Hmm.

Never the less, once I had their essence, I set about creating a spy Zerg template that looked exactly like these winged vertebrates on the outside. On the inside, I gave them the ability to process essence so that I could gather the alien's essence without having to bring it back to base. All they would have to do is lick the aliens to process their essence.

When that was done, I ordered a thousand of these birds to be made, and had them loaded up into Overlords that would ferry them to the alien civilization's doorstep.

OO

I watched curiously as the Overlord angled it's orbit to land on the west side of what appeared to be the civilization's main city. This city was next to a bay that opened to the ocean. The Overlord would land just outside of this bay, out of the view of anyone who happened to be in the city.

When it was hovering just a few meters above the waves, the Overlord opened the flaps on it's side, releasing the new spy zerg that I called Birdlings. I know, I know. It's not original, but I wasn't sure what else to call them.

The Birdlings spread out, so that they wouldn't enter the city all at once. That was to make sure they weren't spotted as something unusual.

I flitted into the mind of the Birdling that would enter the city first. I wanted to get a good look at these new aliens. The Birdling fluttered around the hill south of the bay, coming around to get a good view of the city's port, and I saw the aliens for the first time.

They were humans.

I mentally blinked at the sight. Humans? What were humans doing on an alien planet?

I turned my attention back away from the humans, and noticed that the port was rather small, and so were the ships, the biggest one being a small sailboat that was sailing out of the bay. Most of the ships were small wooden dinghies that people were fishing out of, with a few sailboats dock in the port.

The people walking along the paved road next to the port were wearing what looked like renaissance era clothing, and the buildings looked like they had been built in the medieval era, with a few newer buildings looked much closer to renaissance era.

If this was a civilization that had renaissance era technology, then where was the merchant ships? Where were the warships? In fact, the bay was conspicuously missing a military base to defend it.

In fact, now that I thought about it, the area close to this city seemed to be the only parts of the continent that was occupied. There were no night lights elsewhere on the continent than this small region. Why was there only one city-state instead of many? Even in the most ancient civilizations on Earth, there had been more than one city-state. There had been many, all of which had facilitated trade and war between each other.

I had to be missing something.

Well, I decided to let the Birdlings get on with their business and ordered the Overlords compile updates to be sent back every three hours, or to report back immediately if they saw anything interesting. There were ten Overlords in the area, all on different sides of the region.

I decided to check back on my base, to see how the Spawning Pool was coming along. I came back to myself to see that my newly designed Queen had emerged from her cocoon. The new Queen looked like a giant spider, with very long legs and a slightly bloated abdomen. I had designed her mind to easily handle spawn rates, and she had the ability to hover in the air like an Overlord.

Her job was to manage spawn rates, make sure that the Spawning Pool stayed clean, and continuously dump butt-loads of growth hormone into the pool.

I set about giving her spawn rate orders and started planning the creation of a new spawning pool

The new Spawning Pool and Queen were well underway when I got my first update from my Overlords.

The Birdlings were now distributed evenly through out the human realm, and keeping an eye on the humans. They hadn't gotten any essence yet as I wanted to wait until night to do that. I found something interesting in the data: one of the Birdlings had seen a caravan of traders heading towards the city down a road that lead nowhere.

I was intrigued.

One of the Birdlings had noticed the road and reported it to it's Overlord handler, which had cross referenced the road with our orbital map of the human realm, before it realized that it led nowhere. Overlord dismissed the information, until half an hour later, when that same Birdling had seen the caravan.

I moved into the mind of the Overlord that handled that particular Birdling, before ordering the Birdling to fly down that road. It didn't take long for the Birdling to arrive at the road's destination, and what I saw there shocked me to my very core.

It was a Star Gate.


	7. Expansion 2-2

A Stargate. I was in the Stargate universe. And by the looks of it, it was a Pegasus Stargate, which meant I was in the Pegasus Galaxy, which meant the Wraith. And by the presence of Humans on this world, it meant that the Wraith would be coming _here_, sooner or later.

On the one hand: _Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccckk_. One the other hand: Cool.

The Wraith were probably the most dangerous enemy that I could have to face, for they were a hive-based species like the Zerg. They could potentially consume the zerg and our tech, and could adapt and learn from us. If they could get a hold of something like an evolution chamber, it could propel their bio-tech to unprecedented new levels of innovation, making them all the more dangerous and difficult for me to counter.

On the other hand, I could do the same to them, much more easily. Plus, I had two major advantages over them:

First, they didn't know about me at all, but I knew everything about them. Provided that I built up the resources to counter them, any advantage they might have over me would shrink with every confrontation.

Second, they were dependent on a limited resource for survival, while I was not. All I would have to do to limit their ability to make war is just limit their ability to access this resource.

However, they did have one major advantage over me: They were many, but I was still few. And if they discovered me before I was ready, I was Wraith food.

And I wasn't ready. It would probably be years, maybe even decades, before I was ready, _if_ I was to go to war against the Wraith Swarm. I could not go to war until I had a Swarm of equal size, and that would take a while.

The Wraith would arrive, _Here_, at some point, that was a given. If they were to arrive here, then I couldn't let myself be seen. Perhaps… Perhaps it would be best if I left.

Yes, I decided. I needed to leave as soon as possible. But how? While Overlords did have the ability to create wormholes, they could only do it while working in concert and with the aid of an Overseer. And while I might be able to pack up most of my units and myself into a small fleet of overlords, it would mean abandoning my current base and most of my accumulated resources.

Hmm, maybe not. I would just have to design something that could carry some of it. I couldn't bring the creep or structures with me, but perhaps I didn't have to abandon the nutrient slime or Khaydarin Crystals.

I gave the Queen the order to halt unit productions, stopped the new Spawning Pool from growing, then dove into the Evolution Chamber to start hashing out a new space-fairing unit or two.

The unit I came up with to carry the nutrient slime I called the Bloat Fly. It was simply an Overlord that had a abdomen that could swell up. I decided to make five of them.

I had also decided that the Overlords could just carry the Khaydarin Crystals, they had enough room if I broke them up. I would need a lot more Overlords to carry everything, so I ordered 200 of them to be made. I also ordered 10 of my current Overlords to turn into Overseers.

The second unit I designed was a new body for me. I was tired of being a helpless slug. It was time to be something that was a lot more mobile and could defend itself.

The Unit I designed resembled a Night Fury, but was much bigger, 100 meters tall from head to foot, and 250 meters long. I gave it advanced Psionics, the same innate connection to the zerg that I as Overmind should always have, and the ability to spit acid.

I didn't know very much about Psionic powers, so that was something that I was going to have to experiment with when I had the time.

I had also given the Unit the ability to create wormholes, without help.

Finally, the Unit would have a small Khaydarin Crystal inset on it's forehead to help focus it's Psionics

The only way to create this unit was with a special structure, which I ordered to be created now. I also made some small changes to my current home to prepare for the consciousness and memory transfer. A Nerve Cord would hook me up to this new creature when it was finished, and shift my consciousness and memories to it.

The old Overmind had done this many times, when it created a new and improved body for itself. However, it's bodies were always planted into the ground. I wanted to take flight and soar.

OO

I woke up in my new body, stretching and sitting up, breaking the soft covering of creep that had lain over me. Curiously, I lifted my paw up and examined the digitigrade fingers that protruded from it. I stood on my tip toes.

Turning my head around, I looked at my wings, unfolding them and giving them an experimental flap. I had a wingspan of 200 meters, but I didn't need it to fly. I could hover like an Overlord. I closed my eyes, trying to sense my Psionic abilities. It was there, I could feel the Psionic energy flowing though me.

I opened my eyes and noticed a drone nearby. With careful concentration, I gently picked it up with my mind alone, before putting it down. Glad that worked.

Finally, I did a mental checklist, making sure everything was ready for us to leave. Then I gave the order for the creep to wither and die.

It was time. There was just one last thing to do.

I turned around and located the Evolution Chamber, then opened my mouth and spat acid at it. It didn't take long for it to melt away into nothing. I would have to build a new one when we got where we were going. But I wasn't going to leave anything to chance.

Giving the order to to take off, I activated my anti-gravity organ, and took flight.


	8. Nataila 1

Nataila, Wraith Queen, sat silently on her throne, her eyes closed. Her eyes seemed to flutter, for she was receiving a vision of the future.

Over the years, the Wraith Queens had carefully honed their genetics, their Code of Life, to enhance their psychic abilities. They had done this through genetic alteration tech, but this tech was still rather primitive compared to Zerg's mastery of genetic manipulation.

Many centuries ago, Nataila had happened upon a Code of Life that gave her the gift of foresight. This Gift had come in useful many times, often during conflicts with other Wraith Hives, as her gift allowed her to predict their movements and strategies.

Now her gift was helping her again, by showing her the future of an enemy so terrible, it could be the end of the Wraith.

As the vision came to its end, her body gave a violent shudder as she witness her own death at the hands of this mysterious enemy.

Her eye's opened to see her chief lieutenant standing in front of her, a slight frown gracing his face.

"What have you seen, my lady?" he asked.

"I require food," She stated in a low, demanding growl, ignoring his question.

"Of course, my lady," Chief replied, giving a slight bow, before turning to order food to be brought.

Later, as she feasted on the wailing food, her mind turned to the vision she had witness. It was a vision that was unlike any she had seen before. While most of her visions were clear and easy to interpret, this vision was full of long shadows and gaping maws. However, she had been able to glean some factual information from it.

This enemy was very similar to the Wraith themselves. Not quite the same, there were many differences, but still, very similar. The technology of this enemy was based on Biology, just like the Wraith. This enemy was weak now, but had the potential to become much, much stronger over time, and in the future would be able to over power in a war of attrition.

This enemy knew about the Wraith, and was already planning to engage the Wraith in war. This enemy had advantages that would make it very, very hard to stop once it got going.

Which meant that, if the Wraith were to survive, they had to deal with the enemy now, or it would be too late.

Nataila, Wraith Queen, began to consider a number of ways that this enemy could be dealt with. The first thing she would have to do, she realized, is find it, for the vision had not bequeathed to her that particular piece of information.

And that she knew she could not do alone. Right now, the majority of her hive was asleep, and her hive ship was being run by a skeleton crew. She could not wake them up and risk falling out of lockstep with every other wraith hive in the Galaxy, so she would need help, the help of other hives.

She knew of other Wraith Queens that would be interested in a truce, but only if any vision of hers was pertinent to their interests, which Nataila, Wraith Queen, knew was the case.

In her mind, she made a shortlist of candidates who would be most interested in a truce to their mutual benefit, then picked 5 of the most likely.

"Veraxsis," she said, calling her Chief Lieutenant. She removed her hand from the now dead food.

"Yes, my Queen?" Veraxsis said, stepping closer.

"Remove this from my sight," she said with clinched teeth, indicating the dead food.

"Yes, my Queen," Veraxsis said with a bow, before calling one of the Warriors to come and take the dead food away.

"Now," Nataila, Wraith Queen, stated. "I want you to get in contact with Furous, Delvlan, Caririen, Garra, and Talallai. Inform them that I wish to meet under truce, and that I have details of a great vision to share with them. Tell them that it is of great urgency that I meet with them, that their very lives depend upon it. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my Queen," Veraxsis replied with a bow. "Do you have a world in mind for the meeting?"

"No," said Nataila, Wraith Queen, with a sharp hiss. "I expect you to handle that matter."


	9. Expansion 2-3

I floated in the dark of space, my little fleet of zerg surrounding me. Since I didn't need them to propel my self in space, I had decided to wrap my wings around myself like a bat. While most of my fleet were converged around me, I had decided to use my Overseers to check for X-ray Pulsars, so that I might have a means of navigating around this vast galaxy.

X-ray Pulsars were useful for navigation because every X-ray pulsar had it's own frequency signature. Once you had the location and frequency signature of at least three X-ray pulsars, you could triangulate your position accurately from anywhere in the galaxy, plus or minus 5 km.

To get the relative position of some X-ray Pulsars, my Overseers had arranged them selves into a circle around this system's star, 3 AU distant from the star, and equidistant from each other. They would then use Binocular vision (with each Overseer serving as an 'eye') to ascertain the distance of these pulsars.

They could then calculate it's relative position by comparing it with the distance of the galactic core, the distance of the most distant star on the other side of the galaxy that was still visible, and then the stars on the outer rim of this side of the galaxy. There was a lot of math involved.

Needless to say, this was a long and involved process, so I had decided to take my fleet out to the outer edges of the star system while my Overseers went to work.

And now, all I had was free time. Time to rest, time to _think_.

If the Wraith were to find me now, they could probably take me out quite easily. However, once I got my swarm up and running, it was unlikely that they could resist their own destruction. My swarm could grow, and grow quickly, while the Wraith's population was limited by their food stock. Sure, it would be difficult, but I would achieve victory in the end.

It was a reassuring feeling, the knowledge that I could defend myself from the wraith. I was the Overmind. I was the commander of the Swarm.

I had not always been the Overmind. During the first month or so that I had been here, I was preoccupied with setting up a hive cluster and scouting the area that I had found myself in. I hadn't had the time or inclination to think about my old life, as a human on earth.

I had had family there, in my old life, but strangely when I tried to summon up mental images of them, they were fuzzy and incomplete. They seemed so far away, and there were no emotions attached to those memories. Intellectually, I knew I should feel sad and angry that I couldn't remember them properly, but I didn't.

It was probably for the best. I was the Overmind, now. I couldn't afford to be distracted by memories of my old life. I put those memeories to the side, for now.

OO

I woke up. While waiting for the Overseers to complete their task, I had gone to sleep, and was awakened by a mental ping. The Overseers were sending me the information I had set them to collect. It was a big wad of info that was all jumbled together and I didn't feel like sorting through it for now. I designated one of the Overseers to hold it while I figured out what to do.

What I wanted was a special unit to sort through the information and use it to navigate the cold of space. Unfortunately, I hadn't designed such a unit before I had left, and if I wanted to, I would need an Evolution Chamber.

I considered the possibilities, going through the memeories of the old Overmind. Hmm, the old Overmind had once edited the genetic sequence of a drone once without needing an evolution chamber, once. Or rather, a Cerebrate had. It had been situation where the Cerebrate's hive cluster had been stuck on a world that was poor in minerals.

The Cerebrate had edited the drone so that it turned into a worm like thing to burrow deep into the earth. It had taken all of the Cerebrate's mental energy, but it had managed it.

I could probably do the same.

I decided to perform the procedure on one of the Overseers, they already had a large brain, but most of that was for processing sensory input.

I got to work, ordering the Overseer to create a cocoon around itself, and had one of the bloat flies supply it with some extra nutrients. Then I started making the edits, removing the Overseer's sensory organs and increasing it's brain matter. The new Navigator would get it's sensory input from other Overseers. It would be able to process navigational data and turn it into a mental model of the Galaxy.

A few hours later, the Navigator's cocoon popped. It looked a bit like a jellyfish, with long tendrils floating from behind it's body. It accepted the data and started work on finding our relative position in the galaxy.

A hours later, it figured out where we were. We were about 1500c rimward from the galactic middle rim, where c was light years. As I hadn't decided where the galactic meridian was, there was no aftward or spinward coordinate yet.

Earlier when the Overseers had been checking for navigational data, I had also had them look for any nearby star systems that may be suitable for the zerg to inhabit. There was, a main sequence star about 19c away.

I ordered the Overseers to spin up a wormhole, and we were on our way.


	10. Expansion 2-4

The next chapter after this one will mostly be a new units list, with some other changes that aren't related to individual units.

OO

My little hive fleet emerged about half an AU away from the star. As soon as we arrived, I gave the order for the Overseers to seek out planets in the area. It didn't take long to find them.

There was a gas giant orbiting the star at 1.21 Au, and a another gas giant a lot farther out. The closer gas giant looked a lot like Jupiter, but it was different shades of blue on the bands, with a yellowish spot. The more distant gas giant was a pale blue. Between the two planets there appeared to be an asteroid belt, with a few dwarf planets in the mix.

Besides the gas giants, there were five terrestrial planets, one of which was a super earth. The super earth was orbiting very close to the star, closer than mercury to sol even. It was doing a super fast orbit at 3 million miles away from the star. I wondered how that had happened?

Anyway, the gas giant had quite a few moons, and a good few seemed like good candidates for settlement:

There was a volcanic moon that orbited quite close to the gas giant, and it seemed to have a thick atmosphere. Now, normally a volcanic world would be ideal for the zerg. After all, Char had been a volcanic world. However, I was leery of actually settling on the world, as I wasn't sure if the atmosphere was a good one for Zerg habitation, or if the crust was thick and hard enough to actually land on. A world like Venus, for example, wouldn't be a good world for Zerg, cause our carapace could only take so much sulfuric acid before it melted, and a atmosphere that thick would crush us where we stood.

No, I put that world aside as a maybe, for possible later colonization.

Most of the other moons didn't interest me, save one. It was a rocky moon that seemed rich in minerals, and was fairly small at around 900 km. The moon had the farthest orbit from the gas giant, and such a small moon would be easy to hollow out into a hive world. The old Overmind had created such worlds before, moons that were mined out that were then transformed into hive worlds that could be used as forward operating bases, usually during long protracted wars against technologically advanced species.

I could do the same here, and maybe expand out when I had built up my forces a bit. And I was going to have to expand my forces, if I wanted to survive against the Wraith. Once I got an army up and running, the Wraith should be easy pickings, but until that point I was technically venerable.

The moon I had chosen to turn into a Hive world was pockmarked with craters from who knows how many millennia of impacts. After orbiting it for a while, I spotted a crater that was deep but narrow, good enough that I didn't have to dig out space for a spawning pool. I recalled the Overseers that were surveying the system, and oriented my little fleet towards the crater.

When we landed, I had my drones and Queen disembark from the Overlords, before arranging them around the crater. By the time I had left my old base, I had accrued over 500 Drones, and the made up most of my swarm. I had 300 Zerglings by now, but they were useless in this place. At most, all they would do is clutter up the place, and besides, when I finally did start fighting the Wraith, it was unlikely to be a ground war.

I decided to sacrifice my Zerglings to feed the new spawning pool, ordering them to cluster into another crater nearby that was smaller. This smaller crater would be turned into one the new Digestion Pool, a larger one that I could probably connect to multiple Digestion systems.

I gave orders for 10 of the Drones to turn into Worm Nests around the rim of the spawning pool crater, 20 to form into Nutrient Storage Sacs, 50 to form into Digestion systems, 10 to form into Digestion Pools using craters, and the remainder to start mining. The Bloat Flies I gave the order to dump their contents into the Spawning pool crater, before ordering the Worms nest to suck up the now frozen Nutrient slime (The moon didn't have an atmosphere) and funnel it to the storage sacs.

The 300 Zerglings tipped over and died once I hit the kill switch in them, and the Digestion Pool made short work of turning them back into usable nutrients.

Once that was done, I gave the order for a 100 Lodestones to be built around the rim of the Crater, and after that, 5 preprepped Spawning Larva to be placed into the crater, before ordering them to form into the new Spawning pool.

By now the Creep had spread pretty far, and there were quite a few mines set up. Once the Spawning Pool was finished, I gave the single Queen I had brought with me the spawn rates I desired. For the moment, the extra large spawning pool will not be operated at full capacity, for the simple reason that I wanted to redesign most of the units I currently had available.

We weren't in any immediate danger, and I had grand changes and plans that I wanted to implement before I had a huge swarm up and running.

With that in mind, I ordered on of my drones to turn into a Evolution Chamber, and got to work.


	11. Nataila 2

It was a curious place, this prison that her captor had constructed for her. It was some kind of bubble that orbited a main sequence star just outside of it's Roche limit. The bubble must have had pretty impressive shielding, for in the hundreds of years that she had been here, Nataila hadn't succumbed to radiation sickness. The brightness of the star was also dimmed, allowing her to look at it without going blind.

The bubble was 12 meters in diameter, and had a self contained ecosystem. A single tree grew in the middle of the bubble, which reached 8 meters in height. Once a day a human would grow between two of it's roots, and once it was full grown, she would feed upon it. It was mindless, unlike the squirming food she had fed upon in the past.

The walls of the bubble held fast against her attempts to break it, and every time she tried to kill herself, force fields would appear that froze her in place until she had healed. Once, the force fields had held her in a compromising position until she had stopped trying to kill herself.

In the early years of her imprisonment here, holograms would sometimes appear, displaying events that were happening else where in the galaxy, usually displaying the Avatar personally killing other Wraith queens, or showing the Avatar's fleets destroying Wraith Hives.

But after a few years, the holograms stopped appearing, and all she had to look forward to was the Avatar's sparse appearances. Only one hologram appeared now, a timer that showed her just how long she had been here. Right now it was at 999 years, 11 months, 29 days, 23 hours, 43 minutes, 11 seconds. Almost a millennium.

Most of the time these days, when she was not feeding, she sat in a throne made of stone, doing nothing else for there was literally nothing else for her to do. Her thoughts moved slowly, barely even paying attention to the timer.

She was waiting, and she had been waiting for almost a century now, for the Avatar to appear. In early days, the Avatar appeared often, every time she had a vision of the future. He bearly bothered to speak to her, only using his power to rip the information from her mind, and then leaving.

However, as time passed, he appeared less often, but when he did show up, he talked to her. He would talk to her for hours, sometimes days, about things that Nataila considered inane and insignificant, usually about problems he had while running his empire. The first time he had tried to do this, she had lashed out and tried to attack him. He punished her by causing her more pain than she had ever imagined, then left.

When he returned a month later and tried talking to her again, she elected to remain silent, and this seemed to suit the Avatar just fine.

Once, when the Avatar arrived for another one of his talking sessions, she asked "Why do you keep me imprisoned here?"

The Avatar started at the sound of her voice, before laughing. "Isn't it obvious? I need you for your visions."

"Surly with genetic manipulation technology, you could have simply reproduced the effect in one of your vorta?" she asked curiously. She was beyond acting high and mighty at this point.

The Avatar scratched the back of his head. "Don't get me wrong, I've tried. But it turns out that your essence is too delicate to reproduce elsewhere. Hence me keeping you around instead of killing you. The only reason why you're still alive is because you're useful to me."

Natalia frowned for a moment, before resuming her usual silence. That did answer a few of her questions, but the Avatar wasn't going to any more questions out of her for now.

The avatar, perhaps sensing her reluctance to talk, decided to leave, disappearing in the usual light of Asgard beaming technology.

He didn't visit her again for a few years, and it was back to the usual talking sessions when he return. He didn't seem interested in answering any of her questions, so the Wraith Queen elected to remain silent during those talking sessions from now on.

His visits became more sporadic as time went on, and when he did visit, he explained that he was in the process of invading other universes for their tech and resources, a concept which Natalia found intriguing.

Then, almost a hundred years ago, he stopped visiting her at all.

Natalia was brought back to awareness by the arrival of the Avatar, at last. But it wasn't like his usual arrivals. Usually he entered the bubble via Asgard Beaming, but now he simply appeared, the light of the beam absent.

"Ah, my Queen," The Avatar said with that smug, self satisfied smile that she hated so much. "I'm sorry I haven't had the chance to visit you lately. The Warhammer campaign held my attention for many years. I trust you've had a good rest?"

As usual, Natalia remained silent. There was something different about the Avatar, some hidden quantity she couldn't sense.

"The silent treatment, as usual, I see," said the Avatar with a smirk. "Well, I'm here to tell you that your use for me has come to an end. If you have any last words, now is the time to say them."

Natalia blinked at him with quiet surprise. She opened her mouth to speak, only for a slight squeak to come out. After years of disuse, her voice had deteriorated.

She cleared her throat, then said in a cracked voice: "I was under the impression that my visions were of value to you?"

"They were, when you had them," The Avatar said with a winning smile. "But you've stopped having them, haven't you?"

It was true, over the years her visions had started to fade, with the last one occurring 40 years ago. She didn't know why they faded, but they had.

"How?" was her simple question.

"There are certain signs when you are having a vision," the Avatar answered as he walked past her, looking up at the star. "Your eyes flutter from rapid eye movement, your heart rate increases, and your brain shows higher levels of activity. The last time this occurred was forty years ago."

He turned around. "It was such a shame that we weren't able to reproduce the visions, and I feel you deserve to know the real reason why, if only to realize how close you came to escaping."

"You told me that my genetics were too delicate to reproduce?" Natalia asked.

"That was a lie," the Avatar said easily. "No, the real reason why we weren't able to reproduce the visions was because of how close you were to Ascension."

Ascension. Nataila realized what the Avatar was getting at, and the worst thing was, he was right. She gritted her teeth. If only she had realized this sooner.

"Thing is," the Avatar continued. "Zerg Essence Manipulation Tech is impeccable. It had advanced to the point where it can't improve anymore. There are no more limitations on it. I reproduced your essence the moment I had you, but after many years of failure, I realized that it was only part of the picture."

He placed his hands on her shoulders, and she tried not to shudder under his touch.

"Your brain mass is about 20% larger than other Wraith Queens, when they existed that is," the Avatar commented. "and your psychic potential was greater. If you had taken the time for quiet reflection and meditation, you could have Ascended quite easily. But the path to Ascension is a long one, and you had only taken a few steps along it."

The Avatar chuckled. "I discovered this about a decade after I captured you, and I was curious to see if you would actually ascend at some point. But you never did. I wouldn't have been worried if you did Ascend, for I knew the other Ascended beings would keep you in check. You never would be any threat to me."

"Please-" said Nataila, ready to beg for her life, even though she had been ready to abandon it when she was first captured. But it was too late, for the Avatar had already snapped her head around, breaking her neck. The last thing she saw as her consciousness faded was the Avatar's grinning face that she hated so much.

OO

Nataila came back to awareness with a cold sweat. She was sitting in her command chair, having relived the final moments of the vision she had seen the night before.

She looked around at the command center in the cruiser she and her chief lieutenant to the meeting point where they would meet the other wraith queens, taking the moment to reassure herself that she wasn't actually back in that blasted prison her future self had suffered in.

"We will arrive at the meeting point in one hour, My Queen," Her lieutenant said from beside her.

"Good," She said quietly, her voice sure and strong, instead of the cracked voice her older self had. "I'm going to change. Alert me when we arrive."

"Yes, My Queen," Her lieutenant responded.


	12. Expansion 2-5

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get rid of unit upgrade buildings, as it appeared that they were specialized for producing the essence needed to make particular units. Without them, one couldn't produce more than overlords, drones, and queens.

With that in mind, I first decided to create a ranking system that would determine the size of the individual ground and flight zerg units. Ling, Lisk, and Lord, with Ling being the smallest, Lisk being mid-range, and Lord being the largest.

Instead of having a baseline unit for each type, from which unique types would be upgraded to(like how you upgrade banelings from zerglings), I decided that each unit would be grown individually.

For Ling ground units, I went with the Bladeling, the Gattaling, and the Baneling:

For the Bladeling, I gave them appropriately sized kaiser blades, which would sit horizontally from the Bladeling's body, instead of hanging over their head like a Zergling's blades. I gave the Bladeling two upgrades, stealth and speed. Things like armor upgrades were standard for all zerg units, so I didn't have to make a special upgrade for armor for them.

For the Gattalings, I gave them special appendages which hung over their heads that could shoot spines like Hydralisks could. They also had three upgrades, Spine production rate increase, shooting range increase, and explosive spines, which were spines that had a small amount of corrosive bile in them.

Banelings were pretty much the same, but I replaced their normal acid with corrosive bile, as that stuff did more damage.

For Lisk ground units, I went with Gattalisk and the Bilelisk, both of which were basically built from Roaches and Ravagers. The Gattalisk was basically a Roach that shot spines instead of acid, and the Bilelisk was basically a Ravager. The biggest difference was that they now had Drone-like locomotion, allowing them to move from place to place more smoothly and quickly than the Roach or Ravager previously could. Their upgrades were basically the same as what the old Roachs had.

For Lord ground units, I went with the Bladelord, and the Bilelord.

The Bladelord was basically an Ultralisk with a new name, but the Bilelord was new. The Bilelord looked like a huge scorpion, with with a long tail that hung over their heads, which could shoot huge amounts of corrosive bile, very long distances.

The Bladelord had the same upgrades as the Ultralisk, but the Bilelord had upgrades to range, shooting speed, and amount of bile per shot.

For Ling air units, I decided to use the Locust as the baseline, and got rid of swarm hosts altogether.

The two air ling units I created were the Dakkaling and the Glaiveling. Unlike the Locust, neither the Dakkaling nor the Glaiveling needed to land on the ground to attack, and they lived as long as normal units did.

The Dakkaling shot spines like the Gattaling and Gattalisk did, and the Glaiveling shot miniaturized Glaive Wurms. The Dakkaling had upgrades to spine production rate, shooting range, and explosive spines. The Glaivelings had no major upgrades.

The Lisk air units were a bit more difficult to design, as the only examples of mid-ranged zerg air units were the Mutalisks and the Corruptors, neither of which I particularly liked. The Mutalisks where basically worms with wings attached, and Corruptors were glorified ticks.

The air units I came up with were basically scaled up versions of the Ling units, The Dakkalisk and Glavelisk, and they had similar upgrades. I also made the Banelisk, which could drop packets of corrosive bile. They were basically fast flying bombers.

For Lord Air units, I kept the Broodlord, but it could be created on its own, instead of having to be made from a Corruptor. I also created the Scourgelord and Banelord. The Scourgelord could create live Scourge like the Broodlord make Broodlings, and the Banelord could make Banelings. They all had unit production rate upgrades, and flight speed upgrades.

For Spell casting units, I made the infestor flight capable, and since the Viper was already flight capable I didn't need to worry about that. I also changed the Overseer so that it could be created on its own, instead of having to be made from an Overlord. I gave the Overseer the new name of Observer.

I made a mental note to make a unit that was focused on Psionics in the future, after I had done some experiments in that regard.

In addition to individual units, I decided to make some changes to how units were controlled. The old Overmind's policy of TOTAL CONTROL didn't really sit well with me, as it was the current Overlords could only control about a thousand units before they had to hand off control to another Overlord.

I didn't want TOTAL DOMINATION, I wanted cooperation, I wanted my units to be able to think and cooperate with each other, so with that in mind, I redesigned the hive network so that instead of only being connected to their individual Overlord, the Zerg units could also connect to each other, and share neural resources, like the Geth from Mass Effect.

I also redesigned the Overlords as well. They now resembled the Leviathans from Mass Effect as well, but were much smaller, at only 500 hundred meters in height. Smaller than Leviathans I mean, not traditional Overlords.

Additionally, I changed the way the Hive connection worked, with the Overlord only having to exert complete control over a unit once, after which the unit would imprint upon the Overlord, obeying it's every command without the Overlord having to waste mental resources controlling them. My new Overlords could now control 100,000 units at a time.

To transport units from place to place, I recreated the Gonarch from Half Life, but much bigger, an individual Gonarch was able to carry up to 100 Bladelords, and could fly.

I also made a unit that looked like a giant floating starfish called the Scourge Mother, which was meant to act as an orbital defense platform, protecting the Hive Cluster from orbital attack, not that I expected the wraith to find me out here. Still, it pays to be prepared.

Satisfied with all of my changes for now, I withdrew from the Evolution Chamber and gave the order for one of the new Overlords to be grown.


End file.
